Tech Tips

Keeping
Your Airbrush Shiny and Clean

Without a doubt, the least interesting and
sometimes bothersome aspect of airbrushing is cleaning the
equipment. Neglecting to clean a brush properly is the most certain
way of assuring yourself of never-ending frustration while painting.
Often, thorough cleaning alone may solve a problem.

Most manufacturers would advise you to end
your airbrushing session by running pure thinner through your brush,
disassembling it and soaking or rinsing the parts in appropriate
thinners. While these procedures usually provide adequate cleaning
when changing colours, I found them less than satisfactory after a
full day of airbrushing.

How do you keep your airbrush as clean as new?

Here is my way of thorough cleaning of an airbrush. It applies to
all-metal, double-action types. I use this method once every few
days,
or when I know that I won't be using an airbrush for a while. I
usually spray
acrylics in my brush and therefore can use isopropyl alcohol as cleaning medium;
for oils or resin-based acrylics use other appropriate thinners.

The key to proper cleaning is removing all paint residue from
the internal parts of the equipment, including particularly
hard-to-get areas such as the bodywork, connecting threads, paint
caps and delicate items such as nozzle and needle. Some brushes may
be easier to keep clean than others, but not attended to they
will invariably start to collect paint in confined places,
typically in the nozzle, all threaded connectors and needle
aperture in the body.

The procedure is as follows:

Run
some pure isopropyl alcohol (or other acrylic thinner) through the brush

Disassemble the brush and wipe the needle and nozzle gently with
paper or rag soaked in ethyl acetate

Now take some household silver polishing
compound (Häxan in Sweden) and use it to clean the parts
externally and internally. Silver polish is most likely to dissolve any residue
that remained unaffected by alcohol or ethyl acetate. All
cleaning and polishing must be done gently and carefully.
Suitable cleaning tools are:

Cotton swabs

Go-between dental brushes

Cotton makeup pads

The general principle is to rub and polish the parts externally
and internally until no more black oxidized residue remains an a
clean cotton swab or pad.

The last step is rinsing the parts thoroughly
with lukewarm water and letting them dry.

The result is shown on the picture.

The
advantage of using silver polishing compound is not only restoring
the factory-new shine to the parts, but also that the parts
will move more smoothly after assembly and that there is less tendency for
paint to stick, for example on the needle.

Perhaps a word of caution is also in place,
remember that polishing compound contains an abrasive, so applying
lot of pressure during polishing could (just maybe) lead to parts
wearing off over time. However, I have had my Badgers 175 and 200 for over
two years now and didn't notice any negative effects of my cleaning
technique. Anyway, always remember to be very gentle with the
nozzle!

n

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